


Intensity and Steadiness

by fluffybun



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Gen, Missing Scenes Within Canon, Post-Canon, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-05 18:50:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1828495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffybun/pseuds/fluffybun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Real friendship isn't only about the intensity of wanting to see each other every day, wanting to tell that person everything; it's also about the times when even if you don't see each other every day, talk to each other every day, even years, when you find time to see each other everything falls back together and it's like you were never really apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kwritten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/gifts).



After the war, Anne finds Diana and when she looks up at Anne, both so weary, Diana wonders who is this paler, thinner creature with red hair that grasps her hands. Where was the starry-eyed girl she watched at her wedding to Gilbert? Where was the young girl that she played with in the woods, wandered around Avonlea with?

And Anne then smiles, queenliness unmistakable under the weariness, and Diana remembers and their hug is all-encompassing of the girls they once were and the women they’ve become.

"Shall we go to Hester Gray's garden again?"

"Yes," Diana said simply, gathering her bosom friend in a hug.

***

"I love that it is still somehow blooming after all these years, Diana" said Anne.

"Yes, I come by sometimes and I know that Small Anne Cordelia does too" she said. "Do you remember our old Story Club days, Anne? I was thinking about them because Small Anne Cordelia was writing a story for class the other day and having problems with what to write. I wanted to dig up my old stories and show her, then I remembered what I used to write and got them out and laughed at them."

"You used to kill off so many of your characters, Diana" Anne replied. "My gentle Diana, so kind outwardly, but woe to anyone who walked into one of her stories then!"

They burst into fits of laughter as they recalled those Story Club days. 

***

“And then Mr. Harris died under mysterious circumstances. They found that his food was poisoned, and since he always fed the dog off his plate, the dog died too. And because before the hired boy had brought the food to Mr. Harris he had snuck one of the biscuits on the plate, the hired boy died too. In another area, the beautiful Ms. Donnell also died, this time by being stabbed by a knife. Attempting to save her, her handsome beau, Mr. Right, perished in the struggle between him and the wicked, mad, Master Dave,” Diana read.

How could Diana, her dear Diana, write so many murders in her stories, Anne thought morosely during one of their Story Club meetings.

"Well, I don't really know what to do with them, so I just make them die," Diana said decisively when it was finally brought up.

Anne looked shocked but decided to hunt for a  solution to Diana’s problem. "Diana, well, maybe you could make less people die?"

“But it’s hard to end the story with so many characters since we have to mention what happened to them at the end, you know” Diana protested. “At least when they die in the story you know what happened to them.”

Ruby Gilis laughed. “Maybe you should just have some of the people get married and take honeymoons to get them out of the story.”

Jane, perfectly satisfied with her stories, commented that the best way for Diana not to have to kill many characters would be to have less characters at the start of the story.

Diana thought that was amiable. "Less people to write about."

***

"Oh, Mrs. Andrews, you've come to call?"

"Yes, Anne, I heard that Anne Shir- I mean, Anne Blythe had come to visit and I was sure she'd be here visiting with your mom."

Small Anne Cordelia, smiling faintly as she set the table for her father and her brother's meals, nodded. "Mom went off with Aunt Anne today; they planned to make a day out of it exploring their old haunts, she said."

"Humph, they are certainly too old for that-"

Mrs. Lynde, talking with Mrs. Barry, stopped to smile.

"When Anne comes to visit, she and Diana always can go back to acting like they used to, like they were fourteen years old again."

It was a friendship that had stood the test of time: of love and heartache, drunkeness and croup, separation and raising two families.

It was the best friendship any of Anne's generation could ever claim to have.

***

"Why don't we visit the other places we used to go to," Anne suggested, looking much like the girl she used to be before marriage and childbirth and war had changed her.

"Not the Haunted Woods," Diana said quickly. "Well, not at night. Anne, I can't even tell the children about that woods without remembering how scared we were after what we imagined of it. I'm just glad that Fred doesn't know else he'd tease me about it in front of them and then there would be no getting out of it."

"Then let's go there first" Anne said, smiling as she took Diana's hand.

***

When Diana had given birth to a girl, there was much consternation about the name she had chosen for the wee mite.

"Anne is fine, you know, but why Cordelia? There isn't anyone with that name in either of your families. Why not name her after your mother or Fred's?"

Diana would not be moved. "That is my decision about her name" she said firmly, feeling rather Anne-ish. Fred, next to her, just grinned. Small Anne Cordelia would not easily understand the significance of her name until Auntie Anne is introduced to her, "Mama's bosom friend" though she did not know yet what 'bosom' meant. Auntie Anne smiled, saying that Diana was her bosom friend too, and that she hoped that someday Miss Wright would also find her own bosom friend. 

Looking at how Aunt Anne and her mother smiled at each other, thinking how much they looked younger, Small Anne Cordelia agreed.

***

"And once, you know, Diana, I saw you with Fred and then I realized then and there that I was really going to lose you one day. Though not to the wicked man you once wanted, of course, but Fred Wright." Anne laughed. 

"And I always knew that you would somehow make it up with Gilbert and eventually marry him, maybe even from that time you broke that slate over his head" Diana laughed as they found their way to Lover's Lane. "I wouldn't really want a wicked man," she confessed.

Anne smiled. "I realized that I didn't really want a prince either."

***

Bosom friends.

After all these years, Diana wonders if she and Anne are still bosom friends as she sweeps the floor of her house in Avonlea about five years after Anne had left Avonlea for Four Winds and the Upper Glen.

It was a wonder how Anne and Diana were friends, in all honesty. She knew her parents looked askance at the friendship she had struck with the then newly adopted orphaned girl at Green Gables, had even condemned it when Anne had unwittingly made her drunk (something Diana herself would not care to repeat after so many years, even if she was of age and how lovely Marilla's currant wine had tasted), but they had come around.

Everyone came around when it came to Anne. Well, except the Pyes, but no one cared about them.

Anne was never the most beautiful of the four of them (Diana, Anne, Ruby, and Jane), but when she was in the crowd one could hardly not look at her, with her infectious smiles and starry gray eyes.

And to have that person, someone blessed by starlight she'd say if she would indulge her old Story Club similes, look at you and call you her bosom friend even for a short while was something Diana Wright would never give up.

When the next letter comes from Anne inviting her to visit her in Ingleside, Diana leaves in record time as soon as she can make arrangements.

And when Anne shows her the wonderful places of Ingleside and Four Winds and tells her their stories, it is like finding Hester Gray's garden all over again, again, again.

***

Later on, Anne would name one of her girls Diana and though Small Anne Cordelia and Diana did not become bosom friends like those they were named after, the age gap and distance rather hard to surmount, whenever Anne or Diana would look at their child named so after her bosom friend, sometimes they would let fly thoughts on their friendship.

"And even if Diana and I don't see each other, maybe don't think of each other with all that happens each day, there is always small Anne Cordelia and my own Di to remind us of each other and our troth, our promise."

***

After they had walked through all their old haunts, they end their walk at Violet Vale. The violets Anne thought were souls of amethysts were in full bloom that day, a rare sight that warmed Anne's heart.

"There is so much beauty to see in this world, Diana. I wish I could share it with you, one day at a time. Each day, there is something beautiful to see, maybe it's unexpected and sneaks up on you or something that you actively look for when your day has been a Jonah day. But it's there and one just has to look for it."

Diana smiled and clasped Anne's hand in hers.

She was never as good as Anne with words, with the grasp that made thoughts fly and become formed. She hadn't studied at Queen's, hadn't gone to Redmond and become a BA. But Anne would understand, she knew, so she still made up her mind to say it.

"My life has been forever changed since you came, Anne. I can't tell you how much."

Anne's smile was unforgettable in its brightness. "And mine with you,"

"Can we stay bosom friends forever?"

"As long as the sun and moon endure," (1) said Anne earnestly.

Diana grinned widely, showing off the dimples Anne very much loved. "No. Longer."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always loved Anne and Diana's friendship. At the beginning they seem so similar but as the series unfolds one sees how different they are, Anne's imaginative way of looking at the world to Diana's more realistic bent yet how much they work with each other, even when Diana and Anne walk different paths.
> 
> (1): Directly paraphrased from Anne of Green Gables, the oath that Anne and Diana swear when they first meet.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a beautiful summer day, Anne thought as she put the finishing touches on a cake in the Ingleside kitchen. She smiled as she saw Leslie walking up the steps of Ingleside, holding young Ken's hand and letting Persis greet Di and Nan cheerfully. 

The years had only made Leslie lovelier, even with some wrinkles and maybe a strand of gray hair here and there. But wrinkles couldn't mar her beauty, her hair - the shade of golden yellow that could felt alive, beautifully rippling as she walks, still silenced most anyone when the sunset caught in it and set it ablaze.

There is a story in there, Anne thought, as she moves to open the door and greet the Fords. Maybe someday she'll be able to write it, she thinks. But if she didn't, there would always be just the memories of her and Leslie's friendship, which was always good enough.

***

Leslie brought Anne over to the little house of dreams one day. Owen smiles and waves them off, electing to chat with Gilbert at Ingleside.

"I am so happy that you bought this," Anne said as she knelt to touch the step next to the house. "Leslie, I couldn't be happy in Ingleside knowing that this place was at risk of being torn down or maybe being mistreated by its owners. I feel so sorry for unmaintained houses, how their crime only was that their owners couldn't maintain them or that their owners had to leave for whatever reason."

"I know," said Leslie, smiling as she opened the door. "There are so many good memories I spent in this house, more than the one I stayed in for so many years for all that it was much larger."

"Oh Leslie," Anne said as they sat by the windowsill. "I am so happy that it was you and Owen especially, because you know best how much this house has meant to so many."

"It's nothing," Leslie said softly, "Owen and I are grateful that somehow, some way, you came to Four Winds, Anne. You and Gilbert changed my life, all of our lives."

"And I am glad, so very glad, that I came and met you, Leslie."

***

How intensely she had hated Anne and loved her before, thought Leslie as she unpacked her bags that night. Those moments in Four Winds, envying Anne her relationship with Gilbert, her easy relationship with Captain Jim and Miss Cornelia, with everyone were so much wasted effort. Wasted because even then she already knew that somehow, some way she would have loved Anne, had somehow been curious of her even that day when she had first seen Anne riding with Gilbert.

She had feared that their short friendship would dwindle over the years with distance, but those fears were always put to rest by Anne's shining eyes and her warm hugs whenever the Fords would come to Four Winds. In a way, those yearly summer visits were like coming home.

***

"Your Aunt Leslie wanted to scalp Gog and Magog once," said Anne cheerfully when she caught the children looking at the china dogs one day that summer, Persis and Kenneth wanting to touch Gog and Magog’s noses and Walter looking on calmly.

Leslie laughed her beautiful laugh. "That was so long ago, back when your parents lived in the little house down near the lighthouse, where we stay now."

Walter looked at her gravely. "Why did you not, Aunt Leslie?"

Leslie exchanged an amused look with Anne. "Perhaps we came to an understanding, Gog and Magog and I."

In their eyes, though, they thought about the friendship that had been forged even when the first impression of one was hate and there was much confusion, much miscommunication.

***

“What would happen if one of our children took an interest in each other, Anne?” Leslie asked one lazy summer day as she watched Ken pull on Diana's hair from afar. "It would be interesting especially considering how sneaky you were with Miss Cornelia about Owen and I, not that I'm complaining."

Anne laughed. “But I have so many and you much fewer so it is not as likely, Leslie, though I wouldn’t stop them if they were so inclined.” She saw Diana toss mud at Ken in retaliation. "Though they don't seem inclined at all."

“Would we be horrible mother-in-laws to each other?” Leslie said while chuckling at Ken's indignant glare as he wiped off the mud on his face. 

“Oh, we’d fight over who’d carve the goose, maybe” said Anne, amused at Diana's grin before running away. "And about the gravy, no less."

Later on, they remember this conversation with smiles when they witness Rilla and Ken’s wedding.

***

Leslie's visits were always so short, Anne mournfully thought as she watched Leslie pack the last of her things in her bag. 

"The summer is over again," said Anne. "Oh Leslie, I'll miss you."

"And I you," Leslie replied. "We'll see you next summer, Anne, as long as you aren't too busy" she added teasingly.

"I'll always have time for you, Leslie" Anne said warmly as they hugged.

And as the years go by, there will always be those summers the Fords spent in Four Winds to remember even when times were hard and a war was fought. And after the war, there would be something joyous to behold. Well, after their families had gotten over the shock of that hidden relationship between two of them.

But first there was the war to get through.

***

Dear Anne,

Is it true that Jem has enlisted? It seems like only yesterday that we were cooing over him in your house of dreams at Four Winds, Anne. That little lovely baby has now grown enough to become a soldier…

I am afraid that Ken will think of it, though his sprained ankle will keep him safe a while longer. I am so selfish for thinking that; already I can see that he wants to go, would have signed up the moment war was announced if not for his knee. Owen understands him better.

Leslie

***

Dear Leslie,

I can only pray that all our little boys will return to us someday. Who could have imagined that the war would run so long? We couldn't have. Those days in Four Winds, your visits at Ingleside seem so far away. At least Captain Jim didn't live to see the war; it would only break his heart.

Anne

***

Dear Anne,

I'm so sorry.

Leslie

***

Dear Leslie,

Thank you.

Anne

***

"Did you know that Ken proposed to RIlla before he left for the war?" Anne asked one day when they were at the House of Dreams after the war, Leslie had come down immediately after learning of Rilla and Ken's engagement to help work out the arrangements- Owen followed along bemusedly. Gilbert just grinned as he ushered Owen to his study and left Anne and Leslie to do as they wanted.

Leslie laughed. "No, definitely not! That boy never said anything, though Persis might have had an idea. Goodness, I was surprised when he decided to go to Four Winds after the war. And then to write to me that he was getting married!"

"Rilla gave me a shock also," Anne said. "My letter to you must have been lost or I couldn't write it at all, she kept it so well hidden none of the children knew at all, except maybe..." She paused for a moment, the pain still raw at remembering her little boy that would never come back. Someday it would lessen, the pain.

Leslie patted her shoulder. Anne bravely smiled again. Leslie always understood loss best, never condescending, always just knowing how much to give to someone who was still grieving.

"You can imagine my surprise, Leslie, when I found her crying because she couldn't give another boy who had been courting her a kiss before he left for the war because she had promised her lips to your son! My heart certainly almost gave up from the shock right there and then. To think that so many years ago your Ken was teasing Rilla about carrying a cake. I thought you would have warned me if you had found out at all!"

"Trust me, Anne, I was certainly surprised, for all that I know how popular Kenneth is with the girls." Leslie smiled. "We are going to be the best mother-in-laws. We already get along even before our children fell in love with each other."

Anne smiled back. "I wouldn't have it any other way, Leslie."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leslie's friendship with Anne was built on uncertain grounds (essentially Leslie's mistrust and envy at Anne's lot and Anne's inability to ask Leslie about what she felt was happening), but they worked through it beautifully. It was always a shame for me that Leslie had to move away at the end of Anne's House of Dreams.


End file.
